Educated youth bear brunt of joblessness in Lanka: IMF

Sri Lanka has recorded the highest unemployment rate among highly educated youth among the Asian economies featured in a recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) analysis, highlighting a widening disconnect between educational attainment and employment opportunities.

According to the IMF analysis, about 43% of Sri Lankans aged 15–24 with post-secondary education are unemployed. This compares with around 42% in India and 36% in Bangladesh, while several other Asian economies recorded rates below 20%.

The disparity is particularly striking when compared with Sri Lanka’s overall unemployment rate, which remains below 5% across all age groups. Youth unemployment is considerably higher, at around 24–25%.

Among people of all ages with post-secondary education, however, unemployment falls to around 7.5%, underscoring the exceptionally difficult transition faced by young educated Sri Lankans entering the labour market.

The IMF defines youth as people aged 15–24 and advanced education as post-secondary education.

The analysis points to a broader problem confronting several emerging Asian economies, where the expansion of higher education has not been matched by the creation of sufficient professional and skilled employment opportunities.

The situation suggests a mismatch between the qualifications acquired by young people and the jobs available in their domestic labour markets, with the problem particularly pronounced among recent graduates.

While the employment gap narrows considerably as educated workers move into older age groups, the high level of unemployment among educated youth raises concerns over the ability of the economy to absorb new entrants into the skilled workforce.

The IMF analysis also indicates that developed economies such as Japan and Australia have considerably lower unemployment among educated youth, while several emerging economies face greater difficulties in translating post-secondary education into employment.

For Sri Lanka, the figures show a gap of nearly 40 percentage points between overall unemployment and unemployment among young people with advanced education, making the country’s educated youth employment problem one of the most pronounced in the dataset.